Budapest - The home of a Hungarian Roma politician was set ablaze at dawn on Tuesday in what police believe was a deliberate attack.

The attack took place in Tatarszentgyorgy, a village some 40 kilometres from the capital that was the scene of a brutal murder in February.

One room in the home of the deputy leader of the local Roma Council, Lidia Horvath, was completely burned out, the fire service said.

There was no one at home at the time as Horvath was on duty in a local Roma community guard facility set up following the February murder.

Horvath told the state news agency MTI that the Roma community in her village was living in a state of constant fear.

Peter Papp, head of the county police criminal investigations unit, said apparent arsonists had used some type of flammable substance to start the fire.

The blaze occurred a few hundred metres from the house where a Roma father and son were gunned down in February as they fled their burning home, thought to have been set ablaze by their unknown attackers.

There have been over a dozen attacks involving guns, petrol bombs and other weapons against Roma homes in Hungary over the past year.(dpa)